Cold Valley Nightmare

by Anna Willett

  “And if you don’t find him?” He stopped touching his scar and let his hands dangle at his side. “Or you find him… when it’s too late?”

  Lucy couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked down to where Atlas was now sleeping on the kitchen floor, his powerful legs stretched out and splayed.

  “I’m not going to let myself think like that. I…” Her phone shrilled, cutting off any further conversation.

  “Lucy, have you found something?” Sadie’s voice was breathless – excited. The hope in the woman’s tone was gut-wrenching.

  Lucy forced herself to speak slowly. “I don’t know. It could be nothing.” She heard a rush of breath on the other end of the line, the sound hope made when it began to slip away. “It’s worth looking into.”

  When Sadie didn’t respond, she added, “It might be a lead… A good lead...” She was walking a fine line, wanting Sadie to keep believing that Clem was alive, but not wanting to give her any false hope.

  “Okay, yeah. That’s good then. I mean… Do you think there was someone at the fête?”

  They both knew Sadie was asking if the guy that snatched Clem was at the fête.

  “It’s possible.” Not wanting to give Sadie the opportunity to ask for assurances she couldn’t give, she quickly added, “Look, I need that footage and a list of names as quickly as possible. Within the hour.”

  “Okay but, do you think–”

  “Did you tell the police about Clem going missing at the fête?” Lucy was curious, but as a journalist she knew it was better to be asking the questions.

  Sadie let out a deep breath. “Yes. They didn’t seem interested and just kept asking about Robert.” She gave a short, dry laugh. “They wanted to know if he ever hit Clem. I told them about the fête, but they just kept coming back to the same questions.”

  “Did he?” Lucy knew it was a harsh way of asking, but she had to know.

  When Sadie spoke, her voice was tight. “If you’re asking if Robert was abusive, the answer is no. He smacked Clem on the bottom a few times. He… he didn’t hurt him if that’s what you want to know.”

  The pain in Sadie’s voice made Lucy wince, but she held tight and pushed on.

  “I had to ask,” she said. There was silence on the other end of the line. “Sadie, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” The tightness was gone, but the pain remained. “Do you think I’d have left Clem with Robert if I thought he would hurt him?”

  Instead of pushing on with her questions, Lucy took a second before answering.

  “No, I don’t,” she said. It was, she realised, the truth. “I need that footage and as quickly as possible.” She hesitated before adding, “And a recent photo of Clem, not the one they’re showing on the news.”

  Chapter Ten

  There was a car parked outside the Wheelers’ house. A dark sedan. Ahead of it, two police cars lined the quiet lane. A uniformed officer appeared in the house’s open front door holding a cardboard box.

  “They’re executing a search warrant.” As usual, Brock’s face gave little away. “Do you want to go in and back Wheeler up while they search the house?”

  Damon slowed the Jeep, but didn’t stop. “No, let the smarmy bastard sweat. We’ll come back later.”

  Brock gave a slight nod, but kept his eyes on the Wheelers’ house as Damon drove on.

  The elbow turn at the end of Hollows Lane led them onto the slip road that bordered the forest. For a second time Damon was struck by how isolated the spot was.

  “Not much chance of witnesses out here.”

  “Exactly.” With no other vehicles in sight, Damon was coasting at little more than walking speed. “Whoever did this couldn’t have picked a more perfect location.”

  A few minutes later, the fire road came in sight. Damon nosed the Jeep onto the sandy track. His research told him the trail ran straight for twelve kilometres before meeting a sideroad to the east of Cold Valley.

  “Have you ever been involved in something like this?” Damon glanced at Brock. He was referring to Brock’s time as a cop in Victoria and his subsequent undercover work tackling police corruption in other states. “A missing child? Before all the corruption stuff?”

  It took Brock a moment before he answered. Because of Brock’s dispassionate nature it was hard to be sure, but Damon thought his partner was struggling with a memory that disturbed him.

  “Yeah, years ago when I was still in uniform,” Brock said. “A little girl, nine years old. Leena. Her parents reported her missing, said she’d been walking to a friend’s place and vanished… It reminds me of this place.” He nodded to the tightly packed trees. “Rural location. Missing child. We searched for days. At least ten of us, none of us long out of the Academy. And volunteers, mostly men from nearby towns. I remember the wilderness was so thick, by the end of each day my uniform was torn to shreds.”

  Brock’s face was turned away so his features were hidden. His dark hair was longer these days, not quite the blunt cut he wore when Damon first met him.

  They were moving slowly, the Jeep bumping over the uneven track. Damon kept his gaze on the trail, snatching sidelong glances at his partner.

  “We found her at the end of the fourth day. Someone yelled and we all went running. I remember feeling excited, like something was finally about to happen. I couldn’t have been more than twenty-six. The whole thing was still a big adventure. It didn’t really sink in… What we were doing. What we were looking for. Even when I saw the men crowded around something at the base of a crop of pines… I only felt fascinated, like we were hunting for something rare and exotic, not a child.”

  They were on an incline, the track rising slightly and revealing the endless treetops. Damon eased the Jeep to a stop on a solid looking patch of dirt that shouldered the trail. Usually guarded, it was one of the few times Brock had discussed his time in the police force and Damon didn’t want to divide his attention between his partner and the bumpy track.

  “There was a change in the way the men’s voices sounded, sort of echoed and faint. I don’t know how to explain it, only that the light coming through the trees was fading, making everything look surreal.” His voice was flat, robotic.

  Damon wondered how many times Brock had ran this memory in his mind, turning it over and over so each time a fresh side was exposed in all its rawness.

  “She didn’t look real, and just for a second...” Brock hesitated. “I thought she was a dummy or a big doll.”

  Brock was staring at the windscreen, but Damon didn’t think he was seeing the track. Damon knew all too well how real these ugly memories could be. How enticing they were, with the kind of power capable of pulling you back in and wrapping you so tightly it felt like you were suffocating.

  “I almost laughed.” Brock swallowed; his throat the only part of him that moved. “Maybe I did. Sometimes I remember it like I laughed, but I’m not sure… She was partly buried, her face jutting out of the earth, the damp ground framing her features so her skin looked as pale as wax. And the light coming through the trees coloured everything purple. At least, that’s how I remember it.” He frowned. “A day later the mother confessed. She killed Leena, choked her with an extension cord, and her boyfriend, the father, had buried her.” He shrugged. “A pair of druggies. That little girl was doomed one way or another. Not long after that… I had a few problems and was approached and asked to work on an undercover job.”

  Damon wanted to ask if being undercover, doing something different in a new part of the country had helped block out the memory, but Brock was already back to talking about the case at hand.

  “The search pattern was wider because of Leena’s age. In theory, a child of nine could wander quite far.”

  Damon noticed Brock always referred to the girl by her first name.

  “The little boy, Clem, is only four so he wouldn’t have the strength to make it far in such a thick forest.” Brock pointed to his left. “Particularly, as the ground slopes up from th
e side of his parents’ house.”

  Damon nodded. “How far do you think the cops would have searched?”

  Brock tilted his head to the left as though calculating. “Maximum of two kilometres. Not this far into the forest, although they would have driven this track to make sure…”

  Damon watched his partner’s face change from intent to watchful. Confused, he followed Brock’s gaze. They were on the crest of a small rise with the clear spring sky affording them a view of the treetops, forward, and to the right of the track. For a moment he was unsure of what held Brock’s attention, seeing but not taking in what the dark swirling pattern above the trees meant.

  A kilometre or so to the right of the fire road and deep into the national park, a flock of birds swarmed the sky, some of them diving into the trees, others taking flight. At first Damon thought of the black cockatoos and Lucy’s prediction about a storm coming. Even from a distance he quickly realised the birds weren’t cockatoos but scavengers: crows. His gut tightened as the scene made more sense. A murder of crows.

  “It could be a dead roo?” There was no real conviction in Brock’s suggestion, just flatness like he was still in the memory he’d described.

  Damon opened the driver’s door and stepped out. When his feet hit the track, the sand sunk slightly and for a second he felt like he was drowning.

  “I’m calling the cops,” he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rattling and what sounded like metal grinding on metal came from behind Tim’s closed door. Used to him tinkering inside his bedroom-come-workshop, Lucy barely registered the racket. It had been over two hours since her conversation with Sadie, and her nerves were jangling with the need for something to work on. With each passing minute, her belief that the key to Clem’s disappearance was connected to the fête, deepened.

  Unable to set her mind to much else, she made a fresh press of coffee and poured herself a cup. The attachment Larson had sent with information on Robert Wheeler was now downloaded into her desktop file. Setting her cup on the table beside the laptop, she clicked on the information.

  It was the third time she’d gone over the brief report, noticing Larson’s efficiency in including the basic and salient points. Born in Newcastle, the second largest city after Sydney in New South Wales, Robert Michael Wheeler attended Newcastle Central Tafe where he graduated at age twenty-six with a Diploma of Conveyancing. It tied in with what Wheeler told Damon about being a settlement agent. Wheeler’s parents owned and operated a successful trucking company up until his father’s death in 2007. A wealthy mother would explain how Wheeler was paying for a lawyer like Anton Seabber.

  Lucy leaned back in the chair and sipped her coffee while continuing to read the short history. In 2016 Robert married Sadie and they moved to Sydney. Lucy thought for a moment, realising Clem would have been about one when Wheeler became his stepfather. So far, the information gelled with Wheeler’s account of meeting Sadie. It occurred to her that Clem’s natural father had never been mentioned, so she clicked back into her notes and added a follow-up question about Clem’s father.

  The only other notable piece of information was Wheeler’s 2017 conviction for forgery. Here, Larson noted that Robert claimed the conviction came from a misunderstanding, with the word misunderstanding in inverted commas. Lucy couldn’t help smiling. When she first met Damon’s boss, Larson had struck her as a hard person. He was a man used to dealing with the grim side of human nature and came across as rigid and cold. But lately, as she got to know him, he was growing on her, and for a moment she allowed herself to consider what it would be like to work for him.

  The idea took her by surprise. Until the notion popped into her mind, she hadn’t really fully acknowledged that retiring from journalism was something she might want. Pushing the thought away, she read on. It seemed Wheeler had created a fictitious settlement agency along with a fake website and letterhead. Lucy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Settlement agency scams had been quite common a few years ago with fictitious agencies accepting large fund transfers from elderly people who believed they were buying homes in retirement villages.

  Lucy thought of the expression that crossed Robert’s face when Damon told him to sit down. It was brief, more like a flash than a change in countenance, but she’d seen it nevertheless. Wheeler was a man that liked to be in control. Maybe that need led him to believe he could operate outside the law. If so, how far did that belief stretch?

  While Wheeler hadn’t actually scammed anyone, he was charged with forgery and given an eight month’s suspended sentence. As a result, he’d lost his conveyancing licence. After his sentence was completed, Robert, Sadie, and Clem moved to Western Australia.

  From what she’d seen of Wheeler – charming one minute and watchful the next – it was easy to see why he smelled guilty to the cops. She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. It was possible that Clem’s stepfather was guilty of something, but that something could be a return to his old ways and not harming Clem.

  Still holding the coffee, Lucy put the cup to her lips only to discover her beverage had cooled. She took a swallow and grimaced. It was almost midday. She wondered if Damon and Brock had found anything interesting on the fire road, but decided against texting. She knew Damon well enough to wait, knowing he would get in touch if and when he did find something.

  Instead, she opened her inbox. Spotting the email from Sadie, she felt a small ripple of excitement deep in her stomach. The email contained a list of names and descriptions, as well as three attachments. One was an image and the other two were video files, which she downloaded to her desktop folder. Eager to get a look at the footage, she made herself slow down and open the image. Almost instantly, Clem’s face filled the screen. This photo was different from the one they showed on the news – more candid somehow. Clem crouched in long grass, possibly outside the house in Cold Valley. He wore gum boots and a blue woolly jumper. His skin, like most young children’s, looked rich and flawless and his eyes were impossibly blue and clear. He was, Lucy realised, a beautiful child.

  With the coffee forgotten, she watched the first video. It was short, no more than twelve seconds. Leaning forward, she studied the footage showing a woman with a money belt standing behind a table. She was leaning forward giving change to another woman holding a plate of something that could have been cookies. During the exchange, an elderly man shuffled past, his flat cap tipped so far forward that it almost touched his nose. Also in view was what looked like the corner of a blue bouncy castle and two teenage girls in animated conversation. The excitement Lucy felt only moments ago started to ebb. No one in the short snap of footage stood out as being suspicious in any way. Did I really think it would be that easy? Some guy in a raincoat leering at children?

  Lucy closed the footage and checked the email, ticking off the names and descriptions. Sadie had been thorough in gathering information – everyone in the first video had been carefully accounted for. Lucy supposed the woman would have moved a mountain if it meant finding her son. In all her years as a journalist, the most mothers of missing children and teenagers were asked to do was provide photos, give statements, list friends and associates, and make public pleas for help. If nothing more came of the task, Lucy hoped tracking down information on the fête gave Sadie a few hours where she felt like she was doing something tangible in the search for her son.

  Before opening the next video, she rubbed her palms together, willing the next file to contain something that would move the search for Clem forward. This one was longer: twenty-one seconds. Obviously filmed on a smartphone, the video was focused on a wooden platform being used as a stage area where a group of four girls danced to a popular Disney song. Lucy made a clicking sound with her tongue while scanning the screen. She had no idea what she was looking for, just a faint hope that something would jump out at her, anything that didn’t fit or was out of place. But like the last clip, there was nothing save a group of harmless looking kids watching the dancing
while consuming big wads of candy floss and clutching balloons that waved in and out of focus. On the edges of the crowd, a few smiling women watched the performance.

  “Damn.” Lucy snatched up her cup and took it to the sink.

  She stared out the kitchen window, watching the long grass near the trees. Maybe she’d been way off about the fête and the possibility that Clem going missing twice in just over a week was anything but a sad coincidence.

  Tipping the cold liquid down the drain, she began to really consider what Damon had said about how losing Clem at the fête might have set Wheeler’s dark fantasies in motion. It hadn’t registered at the time, but now staring into the murky plug hole she remembered something about the Wheelers’ living room that bothered her: no toys.

  Lucy didn’t know much about having young children in the house, but every family with little ones she’d ever met had homes scattered with toys. Maybe Robert Wheeler was guilty of something monstrous. Or maybe he’s just a neat freak.

  The sudden bleating of her phone made her jump and drop the cup into the sink where it broke into two large chunks of china.

  “Lucy.” Damon’s one word greeting was enough to prickle the hairs on the back of her neck.

  For a split second, she wanted to hang up before he could say more. Instead, she pulled air in through her nostrils and braced herself. “What’s happened?”

  “We found something in the bush, east of the fire road. The police are there now. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a body.” His voice sounded distant and cut by static.

  “A body?” The word felt cold on her lips and the slimline phone heavy in her hand. Clem’s photo, his cheeky smile and vibrant blue eyes imprinted itself on her mind.

  “Looks that way.” His voice thick with emotion pulled her back from the image.

  “Are you okay?” Before he could answer, she added, “Did you… did you see…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.